Dayworld

"No, I never saw the stiff before, and if I ever see him again I'll put a banana in him where the sun don't shine."

Ruiz had plugged in the woman's ID before questioning her. Caird was ru

He sighed with exasperation. Pallanguli must know that that would be in her file, yet she had lied. Was she just stupid or perverse? It made no difference. She must be brought in for questioning. But he would have bet thirty credits that her story was made up. Rootenbeak had asked her for help and gotten it. Moreover, he had gotten two other mi

That is, unless he was subtle enough to calculate that the person in charge would think of this and so he had, instead, actually entered the building. No. There was too much danger of outsmarting himself.

Caird would have called off the apartment search if he had been one hundred percent sure that he was right. He did ask for more perso

Caird glanced at the strip with its flashing APPL ON HOLD! No time for that now. The applicationfor permission for Ozma to have a child by him would have to be transmitted later.

Another message appeared on a strip. It was from the commissioner-general's secretary, asking him if he could move the luncheon date up to 11:30 A.M. He replied that he could. The strip displayed: RCVD & TRMD.

His request for satellite data re the search for Rootenbeak came in then. Usually, he got it within ten minutes. Today, for unexplained reasons, the cha

"Why not?"

"I'm sorry, Inspector," the sergeant said. "But we have a particularly gory murder on Carmine Street. Two victims, a woman and a child."

Caird was shocked. "That makes two murders in Manhattan this subyear, and the second month isn't over yet. My God, there were only six all last subyear!"

The sergeant nodded solemnly. "It's become an epidemic. Social rot, sir, though the terrible heat is a contributing factor."

After Caird had quit talking to the sergeant, he sat and scowled. The organic force could have been much larger and he would not now be lacking perso

Ah, well, he could only work with what he could get. By three this afternoon, according to the weather-strip report, he could no longer depend upon the sky-eyes. A heavy overcast would cut off their view.

Chapter 5

When eleven o'clock came, Rootenbeak still had not been observed or caught. Caird worked for a few minutes at other duties before leaving the building. A station-pool robot car took him up Womanway Boulevard to Columbus Circle and up Central Park West to West Seventy-seventh Street. The John Reed Community Block Building occupied all of the Number 100 blocks of Seventy-sixth and Seventy-seventh streets, including the enclosed streets. Just north of it was the Museum of Natural History. Caird got out of the car just off the third-level ramp. The car moved slowly away and disappeared down the west ramp. He walked into a huge lobby decorated this year in Mycenaean Mode. Golden Agamemnon masks smiled at him from the walls, ceiling, and floor. In the middle of the lobby was a fountain holding a statue of Ajax defying the gods. A yellow flourescent jagged lightning bolt of plastic reached halfway down from the ceiling toward the arrogant and doomed Achaean. This piece of statuary had been selected by some bureaucrat who thought that it would subtly put across a moral. If you were stupid enough to resist the government, you were fried.

However, despite one-hundred-percent literacy and free lifelong education if you wanted it, nine-tenths of the viewers had never heard of Ajax, the first human lightning rod, and most of the others did not care about him. The moral was lost, and the art was, Caird thought, tacky.

He went up a pneumatic elevator to the top floor and got off at the entrance to the Zenith Restaurant at 11:26. He told the maоtre d' that his reservation had been made by Commissioner Horn. The maоtre d' tapped three keys; the screen displayed Caird's face and some lines of bio-data.

"Very well, Inspector Caird. Follow me."

The Zenith was very elegant and select. Six musicians on a podium played softly, and the conversation was in low tones. That is, it was until Anthony Horn rose from her table to greet him. She strode toward him, arms out, her orange-and-purple robe flapping in her wake. "Jeff, darling!"

The other diners looked up or flinched or both as her voice boomed out. Then he was enfolded in silk, perfume, and abundant flesh. Looking down her breasts was like looking along the curve of twin planets from forty thousand feet up. He did not mind having his face pressed against them, even though it was undignified. For a brief moment, he was happy and secure in the bosom of the Great Mother Herself.

She released him and smiled, showing big white teeth. Then she turned and led him by the hand to the table in the meat-eaters' section. She was six inches higher than his six feet three, though her high heels accounted for four of the inches. Her shoulders and hips were broad; her waist, very narrow. Her golden hair was piled high in a coiffure shaped like an eighteenth-century tricorn hat, all the fashion just now. Huge golden earrings, each inset with the Chinese ideogram for "horn," dangled from small close-set ears.

They sat down, and she leaned against the table, her breasts extending like two white wolfhounds eager for release so they could chase the prey. Her big deep-blue eyes co

His eyebrows rose. He said, softly, "The government's found out about us?"

"Not yet. We ..

She stopped what she was going to say because the waiter, a tall, turbaned, bearded Sikh, had appeared. They were busy ordering drinks and looking at the printed menus for a while. The Zenith was too elegant to display the menus on wall strips. When the waiter had left, Horn said, "You know about Doctor Chang Castor?"

He nodded. "He hasn't escaped?"

"Yes, he has."

Caird grunted as if he had been hit in the solar plexus, but just then the waiter brought his wine and Horn's gin, and two minutes later, a folding table and two trays with dishes of food. It did not take long to fill an order. The food was precooked anywhere from last Tuesday to two subyears ago, stoned, and so kept in perfect state. Destoned, it only needed warming and putting on the plate.

They chatted about their families until the waiter left. Caird jerked a thumb at the waiter's back.

"He's an informer?"

"Yes. I used my co